Problem of Evil

• Theodicy


  A philosophical and/or theological exercise involving a justification of the righteousness of God
• Aspects of the problem of evil

  • Logical
  • Evidential
• Logical problem of evil

  • Theists have to show that their beliefs make sense and are logical
  • If God is omnipotent, why does He not stop evil?
• Evidential problem of evil


  • The amount of evil in the world appears to challenge the goodness of creation
  • The suffering of innocent children cannot be justified
• Ivan Karamazov: 'It would be better if the world did not exist at all that have a world which included the suffering of children'
• Monism


  Everything is of one nature, and this nature is good rather than evil, so evil is an illusion
• Protest theodicy


  • Argues that God cannot be totally benevolent given the amount of evil and suffering in the world
  • Involves a defiant stance towards God, reminding Him of His promises and hoping for the future
• Process theology


  • God is seen as intimately involved with the world and its suffering, a 'co-sufferer'
  • God's omnipotence is redefined as the ability to persuade and lure rather than control
  • Evil occurs when God's goals are not realised
• Classical theodicies


  • Augustinian
  • Irenaean
• Augustinian theodicy


  • Relies heavily on biblical evidence
  • Explains evil through the concept of original perfection and the Fall
• Irenaean theodicy


  • Relies less heavily on biblical evidence
  • Explains evil as enabling human beings to reach divine likeness
• Classical theism


  The traditional conception of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good
• There is no guarantee that good will ultimately overcome evil
• It is not even clear that there is life after death
• Some process theologians speak in terms of existing in the memory of God
• Two classical theodicies


  • Augustine (354-430)
  • Irenaeus (130 – 202)
• The Irenaean concept relies less heavily on biblical evidence and is generally seen as the stronger concept by modern readers
• Augustine


  A young man who turned against the Christian faith of his mother and investigated a number of different schools of philosophical thought, but ended up becoming a committed Christian and monk, inspired by the preaching of Ambrose of Milan
• Augustine wrote a large number of books about Christian doctrine and beliefs, the most famous of which are probably The City of God and Confessions in Thirteen Books
• Augustine was chosen by the people of Thagaste in north Africa (now part of Libya) to be their bishop
• Augustine approached the problem of evil from different angles and had strands of thought rather than a worked-out theodicy
• Augustine's theodicy


  Based on the creation stories in Genesis 1-3, the Platonists' view that God created everything in an instant but the world has the capacity to develop, and a rejection of Manichaeism
• Evil (according to Augustine)

  A consequence of the misuse of human free will, not a substance created by God
• Evil as privation


  Evil is not a substance, but a lack or absence of good, a state or condition that results from the misuse of free will
• Free will


  God created humans with free will, which allows them to choose good or evil, but this also means they can misuse their freedom and choose evil
• Augustine believed that the story of the Fall in Genesis, where Adam and Eve chose to turn against God and sin, had two key consequences: it meant that human nature became corrupted so that every generation would inherit their sin (the doctrine of Original Sin), and it also corrupted God's creation, leading to natural evil such as disease and natural disasters
• Sharing in Adam's sin


  Augustine argued that all human beings were present in Adam's sin and share in the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin, because they were 'seminally present' in Adam
• Why create creatures with free will?

  Augustine believed that free will matters so much that he argued that allowing evil to happen is a price worth paying for human freedom, and that the contrast between good and evil highlights the beauty of goodness
• Criticisms of Augustinian-type theodicy

  • Modern science rejects the picture of a fall of humanity from perfection and suggests an evolutionary development
  • If humans are finitely perfect, then even though they are free to sin they need not do so, and God must share the responsibility for their fall
  • Modern theories of Creation, such as the theory of evolution, seem to disprove Augustine's ideas
  • Over the centuries, philosophers have questioned why a perfect world would go wrong and why angels would turn against God
  • The existence of hell is not consistent with an all-loving God
  • Augustine's view of evil as a privation is challenged as it is not sufficient to say that it is a lack or absence
  • If everything depends on God for its existence, then God must be causally involved in free human actions, and it is hard to clear God from responsibility for evil
• Free creatures

  Able to reject God's love as well as respond to it
• The creation of free creatures involved the risk that persons would misuse their freedom and reject the good
• God could have chose to make a world without free creatures, but that would mean the creatures would be robots and it would be a non-moral world
• The existence of hell

  Seems contrary to a loving / good God
• Augustine's view of evil as a privation is challenged. Many would argue that it is a real entity
• If everything depends on God for its existence, then God must be causally involved in free human actions. Do we have free will?
• Irenaeus


  Bishop during the earliest stages of the development of Christian Theology, one of the most important Greek Fathers of the Early Church
• Irenaeus' greatest work


  On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-called Gnosis - 'Against the Heresies'
• Irenaeus intended to show that everything came from God and, therefore, he had to explain the existence of evil in the role and even give evil a purpose
• Augustinian theodicy


  A soul-deciding theodicy
• Irenaean theodicy


  A soul-making theodicy